I recently got a new canon digital camera, and of course, one of the features of the camera is that it will take digital movies — at 30 frames per second.
I’ve had a dedicated digital camera for years that takes them at 60 frames per second. While it will theoretically take better movies, I find myself using the new digital camera which is optimized for still photography to take movies a lot more often. Perhaps it is because the Sony movie camera requires (usually) a digital mini dvd disc and the transfer mechanism from the Sony to my PC is incredible cumbersome because Sony is forever supporting their own (weird) formats for flash cards.
Simple Programs for Editing Movies on the PC
Like I said, I have a Toshiba (PC). Yeah, I know…I’ve heard from everyone how great iMovie for Apple is, but try as I might to find something that is iMovie-like I haven’t been able to find a suitable solution for the PC. The PC has “Window Movie Maker” which is easy to use, but the quality of the films coming out of Apple users just blows away anything I’ve seen on the PC so far. At least, this seems to be the case with people using windows movie maker.
Programs for Editing Movies with the PC
The mid-range programs I’ve been able to find to do simple YouTube Movies for the PC have been basically stripped down, less feature rich, and less expensive versions of the expensive ones.
The two that I’ve paid for and played with a bit are: Vegas, and Adobe Premiere.
Vegas has the free download of a simple, stripped down version, and for Adobe, rather than shell out the 600 bucks, i bought a cheap, underpowered version called Adobe Premiere After Effects 8.0 at the local Best Buy for 100 dollars. The Adobe seems nice, but for a total newbie, I would really like some richer documentation. What would be really nice is a manual. I know a paper based manual is kind of “old school”, but hey, so is buying a box of software. I can’t remember the last time I did that.
The Adobe Premiere came with a DVD chock full of ‘content’. Theoretically, there are themes and various templates to get you started, but I haven’t been able to make much use of them yet. Most of my work has been rather remedial. I’m still just trying to get various scenes strung together with cuts and transitions that look a little more professional that just a straight jump cut to the next clip.
It did however have a nice little utility that let me load some still images into the software and then it created a pan and zoom around on the pictures with some funky music playing in the background…and also automated the process of creating a DVD menu — like they do for feature length movies. You know, the one where you have to figure out what constitutes a button that will just play the bloody movie, and how do you fast forward to various scenes in the film?
Anyways, I’m still looking for that magic bullet, or maybe Apple will break down and build iMovie for the PC (although I highly doubt it). At some point, I might have to just buy an Apple for the express purpose of editing my simplistic youtube movies.
Programs for Editing Movies
I recently got a new canon digital camera, and of course, one of the features of the camera is that it will take digital movies — at 30 frames per second.
I’ve had a dedicated digital camera for years that takes them at 60 frames per second. While it will theoretically take better movies, I find myself using the new digital camera which is optimized for still photography to take movies a lot more often. Perhaps it is because the Sony movie camera requires (usually) a digital mini dvd disc and the transfer mechanism from the Sony to my PC is incredible cumbersome because Sony is forever supporting their own (weird) formats for flash cards.
Simple Programs for Editing Movies on the PC
Like I said, I have a Toshiba (PC). Yeah, I know…I’ve heard from everyone how great iMovie for Apple is, but try as I might to find something that is iMovie-like I haven’t been able to find a suitable solution for the PC. The PC has “Window Movie Maker” which is easy to use, but the quality of the films coming out of Apple users just blows away anything I’ve seen on the PC so far. At least, this seems to be the case with people using windows movie maker.
The mid-range programs I’ve been able to find to do simple YouTube Movies for the PC have been basically stripped down, less feature rich, and less expensive versions of the expensive ones.
The two that I’ve paid for and played with a bit are: Vegas, and Adobe Premiere.
Vegas has the free download of a simple, stripped down version, and for Adobe, rather than shell out the 600 bucks, i bought a cheap, underpowered version called Adobe Premiere After Effects 8.0 at the local Best Buy for 100 dollars. The Adobe seems nice, but for a total newbie, I would really like some richer documentation. What would be really nice is a manual. I know a paper based manual is kind of “old school”, but hey, so is buying a box of software. I can’t remember the last time I did that.
The Adobe Premiere came with a DVD chock full of ‘content’. Theoretically, there are themes and various templates to get you started, but I haven’t been able to make much use of them yet. Most of my work has been rather remedial. I’m still just trying to get various scenes strung together with cuts and transitions that look a little more professional that just a straight jump cut to the next clip.
It did however have a nice little utility that let me load some still images into the software and then it created a pan and zoom around on the pictures with some funky music playing in the background…and also automated the process of creating a DVD menu — like they do for feature length movies. You know, the one where you have to figure out what constitutes a button that will just play the bloody movie, and how do you fast forward to various scenes in the film?
Anyways, I’m still looking for that magic bullet, or maybe Apple will break down and build iMovie for the PC (although I highly doubt it). At some point, I might have to just buy an Apple for the express purpose of editing my simplistic youtube movies.